


For whoever can break through the ice

by lagardère (laurore)



Series: another new world (an academia verse) [1]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Academia, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Jopson-centric, M/M, Mentions of alcoholism, Pining, mentions of Crozier so, mentions of the rest of the cast/crew, polar research
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 06:16:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19717885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurore/pseuds/lagard%C3%A8re
Summary: On the eve of a ten-year reunion at his old university, Thomas Jopson runs into a familiar face.





	For whoever can break through the ice

**Author's Note:**

> I arrive a year late in this fandom and I’m not even bringing Starbucks, but rather the ridiculously weird kind of coffee that will maybe appeal to 1 people. If you are the 1 people, welcome, this fic is for you.
> 
> With thanks to [austrechild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/austrechild) and [alittlestardustcaught](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlestardustcaught) for early rereads.

**i.**

  
  


They meet between the poles.

Thomas would have walked straight past if something in the man’s figure hadn’t caught his eye. He’d like to pretend it was a flicker of recognition, but in truth, it’s rather that he isn’t above checking someone out if the setting allows for discretion, and that after all this time, Edward Little has lost nothing of his casual elegance, despite the wear and tear of an added decade.

Little is standing right under the Antarctic, head craned back to look at the painting. Thomas might have resumed walking if Little’s dark eyes hadn’t shifted in his direction. Against all odds, his lips twitch into an instinctive smile.

“Jopson,” he says.

Thomas can’t remember the last time someone called him by his last name. He refuses to consider the fact that it may have been Little himself. He checks his step, resisting the urge to pull at his wrinkled shirt.

“Hadn’t seen these in a while,” Little says, with a nod at the paintings on the domed ceilings above.

“Me neither,” Thomas says, though he knows the paintings well, from one too many rainy afternoons spent waiting for Professor Crozier on the bench by the door, reading the names of polar explorers along the edge of the maps, committing the details of the paintings to memory: the Antarctic surrounded by ships like some naval siege, the Arctic bordered by land - plains the corroded green of deep-reaching ice, and brown mountain ranges that stretch out spindly and crooked like fossilised bones.

“Do you want to go in?,” Little asks, nodding towards the sliding door that leads from the hall to the Polar Museum.

Thomas follows without giving himself time to hesitate. He would have gone in, after all, with or without Edward. This time around, there is no planned meeting with Crozier - none of the occasional glances towards the windows to try and catch a glimpse of the professor’s tired face, the ruddiness of his cheeks an indicator either of the cold or of the whiskey that he’d taught Thomas to hide on days when he could not “afford to let them see the holes in the hull”. 

That’s a secret him and Edward alone used to share - the keys to Professor Crozier’s liquor cabinet.

They come to a stop in front of a display about the arctic wildlife, seals and polar bears arranged in an old-fashioned tableau.

“What brings you to town?” Edward asks, eyes carefully set on the polar bear.

“My ten-year reunion.” Following Edward’s lead, Thomas feigns to be absorbed by the taxidermy. “And you?”

“I came back,” Edward says. “A week ago. I’ll be here a while.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and Thomas doesn’t ask. Research project, he surmises, perhaps in preparation for another trip to the far north. He has a vivid memory of the last time that he’d tried to have a discussion with Edward ( _“My place in this expedition was secured by Professor Crozier six months ago. You can’t just kick me out, Edward. You can’t leave me behind!”_ ) - a pathetic message left on Edward’s voicemail that Edward had never deigned respond to, much as he had avoided Thomas right up until the expedition finally departed without him.

Then again there’s any number of reasons why Edward might be around. Some grant or fellowship, of the kind that is liberally bestowed upon former public school types. Thomas’ college used to be full of them, boys who were often clever and not overly ill-intentioned but prone to squander their good fortune and wipe their feet on their reputation, because they were unable to conceive of it ever being tarnished. 

Back then, Edward wasn’t haughty so much as remote, a bit of a twat in some ways for sure, but hardly the worst of the lot. Maybe Thomas is being unfair. 

And there’s another thing that comes to mind, as he keeps staring at a plate about penguins without being able to properly read it. It’s something Cornelius Hickey had told him, once, as he caught Thomas sneaking glances at a group of former Eton boys. _Guys like them, they’re twice as likely to look at you the way you want them to, and then twice as likely to lie about it._

Edward used to be fairly tactile with his friends, but he was hardly promiscuous. Thomas can’t even remember him being close to anyone, in fact, with the notable exception of Professor Crozier. The only occurrence that stands out in Thomas’ memory is a brief cigarette break after the projection of a documentary about life in the gulags - the documentary itself Thomas remembers little about, but he hasn’t forgotten the way Edward’s hand had cupped around his to shield the flame of the lighter from the cold wind, or the flicker of Edward’s smile as Thomas breathed smoke onto his reddened fingers. _Maybe I should…_ , he’d thought, and the thought had died out. 

He’d been nineteen at the time. Willing to play with fire, but not to set himself alight.

“How have you been?” Edward asks, stepping on towards a display of parkas and sealskin boots. “Are you still working on…” There is a prolonged pause during which Edward fishes for the answer to a question Thomas is fairly sure he never asked, not during the full three years that Thomas spent at university. Him and Edward had regularly crossed paths at the time, given that Edward was Professor Crozier’s assistant and that Thomas made daily visits to Crozier’s office, as if that might have helped him turn himself into a permanent fixture, some beloved armchair or lamp that the professor would have - if not cared about - at least forgotten to discard. Edward had never paid Thomas’ research much attention, though, aside from a somewhat dismissive politeness - 

“Wilson,” Edward says. “You were working on Edward Wilson. His drawings of the Terra Nova expedition, but Francis wanted to steer you towards a PhD. Some transdisciplinary thing, art and science? Wasn’t Goodsir going to be your supervisor?”

Thomas stares at him until Edward looks away, ruefully straightening a collar that had no need of his impatient fingers.

“Not Goodsir then. Macdonald? Stanley?”

“It would have been Goodsir,” Thomas says at last, watching Edward’s discomfort with pointed interest. A flush has risen to his cheeks. “He left with you,” he goes on. “On the expedition? And then he never came back.”

“Right,” Edward says. “He met this biologist. They didn’t speak the same language and he’d bring her along to our dinners - we took to calling her Silence. If the good doctor was to be believed, all they wanted was to work in the same lab.”

He moves on to the next case, peering down at the sledge inside it.

“Did you do it then?” he asks. “The PhD.”

“Of course not.”

Edward frowns, mouth halfway to a grimace, and though the expression is wearier than it used to be, it remains eerily familiar. Edward had been one of these students that looked perpetually tired and somewhat upset - with good reason sometimes, for being Crozier’s subordinate was not always a carefree and fulfilling experience, what with the midnight booze runs and the having to stand in for Crozier at short notice for this or that seminar despite the fact that Edward worked in an entirely different field - but after a while, the sad face had become rather permanent for a young man in his early twenties.

“Do you still smoke?”

Edward’s face relaxes a fraction.

“Do you still pretend you do?” he says, and it’s like a knife in the gut.

All these times when Thomas had followed him outside the old stone building to get a moment away from the crowded little office with its mismatched furniture, a mixture of aesthetic chic and various odds and ends, with little certainty that Crozier could tell the difference between the Dresser teapot with its broken lid and its Ikea descendent; the plants that Miss Cracroft kept buying for Crozier and that she then had to water, until the day she found out she could delegate the task to Thomas, lecturing him at length on the care of orchids and ferns; the antique weapons that Crozier’s friend James Fitzjames brought around and then forgot, a musket here and there, a long rifle under the faded cushions of the couch that Thomas and Edward had used to shoot a couple of clay vases that they’d decided, with all the foolishness of youth, must be the least valuable ones.

It had almost cost Thomas his scholarship, though the affair had died out fast with Fitzjames’ intervention, and Edward had readily claimed it had all been his idea.

They step out of the Polar Research Institute. Thomas would wager that neither of them has taken in a single fact about polar exploration. Edward rolls him a cigarette and then makes another one for himself as Thomas tries not to let his eyes linger - on the slender hands - the dark frown - the lowered lashes - and that flick of tongue, as Edward wets the cigarette paper. 

If Thomas is to be honest with himself, it was only after the expedition fiasco that he’d lumped Edward in alongside the rest of his public school clique. Until then, Edward Little had been the kind of fantasy they sold you in gothic novels, sad and serious in equal measure, straight-nosed and dark-eyed, smiling so rarely that each flash of teeth - the eyes crinkling at the corners, the eyes suddenly bright - seemed like a hard-won prize. Edward always laughed like he’d been caught utterly by surprise.

“Do you remember the rifle?” Thomas asks, leaning towards the proffered lighter and taking a slow drag of the cigarette. It’s his first in quite some time, though it hasn’t been ten years.

“Of course I do,” Edward says. “James stopped leaving them lying around after that… We got a lecture on how the guns were ‘precious artifacts’ and ‘objects of research’, not ‘toys’.” His smile grows fond. “It was your idea,” he reminds him.

“It was,” Thomas agrees. 

Recklessness is not in his nature, but they’d just spent a full five hours kicking one of Crozier’s lectures into shape, and he’d felt almost drunk with exhaustion, and there’d been a bit of a spat with Cornelius Hickey, who had hogged Crozier’s desk for most of the afternoon as he reviewed a paper. That was back when Hickey was still trying to curry Crozier’s favour, before he’d decided that undercutting his mentor would be a shorter track to academic fame. _Put that down, Jopson,_ he’d said. Thomas had just relocated from the floor to the couch to try and relieve an ache in his back, and he’d gingerly lifted the rifle to avoid sitting on it. _You’re going to hurt yourself._

 _I know more about rifles than you do, Hickey,_ he’d replied, a tad smartly, and the rest, as they say, is history.

“He’s into rockets these days,” Edward says. He exhales a mouthful of smoke. “James. All manners of old fireworks. I’ve got a strong suspicion that he shoots them out of his back garden… Francis is half living at that house. Not in any official capacity, mind you. I’m not sure he’s aware that he’s moved in. I think James keeps him focused, or at least sober.”

“So he’s doing well,” Thomas ventures. “Crozier, I mean. Is he still at war with Hickey?”

“It’s Doctor Hickey now, somehow,” Edward scoffs. “Yes, they’re still fighting it out in peer-review publications and at whatever public dinners they both get invited to, but it’s dying out. People are starting to catch on to Hickey’s game. Provocative theories, and not much evidence to support them. What a fucking asshole.”

Thomas gives him a startled look. Edward isn't usually one for vehement displays.

"He was trying to get a degree in psychology when I met him," Edward says. "When he joined our lab, he was supposed to work on the effects of the polar night on human behaviour. And all of a sudden, he's an expert on Inuit mythology? ... You do know that’s why Francis left ahead of our expedition, right? To do some damage control because of Hickey’s invasive ‘sociological’ studies. That madman’s understanding of anthropology is a strange blend of Victorian colonialism and of the mass media approach to fact-checking. Anyways. What I was going to say, initially, is that you should come and visit.”

“Come and visit,” Thomas repeats, still slightly dazed by Edward’s diatribe, though it does bring back a few too many memories of Cornelius Hickey’s self-satisfied smirk. 

When all was said and done and they’d all left for the North Pole without him, it hadn’t been the thought of Hickey that sent Thomas running for the hills. It had been Crozier’s silence, and then Edward’s.

“Come and visit at James’”, Edward says. 

“I won’t be around long enough. I only came for the reunion, really.”

He’s done smoking by that point and he wonders if he shouldn’t use this as an excuse to leave. 

“I know for a fact that Francis tried to get in touch with you,” Edward tells him. “But you’re an elusive man, Jopson.”

And the worst thing is, Edward is telling the truth. Thomas had indeed received the occasional message or email after his departure from Cambridge - and even, after a time, one or two letters, the address written out with Crozier’s decisive stroke. After the initial, unforgivable silence, the professor had tried to reach him.

“So what’s the truth of it?” Edward asks, and before Thomas can do more than stare numbly at the efficient movement of his hands, there’s another cigarette between his lips, the lighter poised at the tip. 

“The truth of what?” he asks, around a mouthful of smoke.

“What have you been up to, for the last ten years?” Edward asks. “Or am I supposed to save the question for tomorrow, at your reunion?”

“I’m not…” Thomas hesitates. “I’ll meet up with the people from choir. I wasn’t going to… seek out anyone else.”

“Of course you were in the bloody choir,” Edward mutters.

“And you were in the rowing team,” Thomas retorts weakly. “Do you still see the rest of your boat sometimes? Irving, Gore and the others?”

“Everyone but Hickey,” Edward says. “So you don’t want to tell me?”

Thomas gives his cigarette a considering look. 

“I didn’t have the money to spend another year at uni. And I lost my scholarship when I couldn’t make the cut for the research trip. I’d spent more time drawing up Crozier’s travel inventories than working on my finals. And then you… the expedition was gone, the professor was gone.” He looks away from Edward’s concerned frown. “I went from being Professor Crozier’s intern and fellow Arctic traveller to working two jobs a week and spending my remaining nights manning the till at an art gallery. Until I decided to move home - my mother was recovering from a work-related accident. It seemed better to be close-by. And that’s the end of it. I have a job there, at the local museum. The Museum of Rural Life - I wish I was kidding.” He finally looks up. “What about you?” he asks.

Edward’s gaze has a tendency to be intense no matter the circumstances. It’s part and parcel of the Byronian aesthetic. But there’s something about it now that makes it difficult for Thomas to meet his eyes. Not pity, not quite, but rather something close to anger. 

“How is your mother?” he asks.

“Better,” Thomas answers, truthfully. It hardly feels like the time to explain that good days and weeks and even months can still be followed by a single bad night, that every time his phone rings he feels an answering surge of dread, that coming here, even with her benediction, had felt like running away - and in spite of the guilt, he had welcomed this temporary escape.

Some of it must have transpired in his face, however, because Edward sighs, and half-raises a hand as if to set it on his shoulder, though he seems to think better of it.

“Do you have time for a walk?” he asks.

  
  
  
  
  


**ii.**

  
  


The timeline, as Thomas very well remembers it, went as follows:

Two weeks before the expedition was scheduled to depart for the North Pole, Crozier had left abruptly. This was not uncommon, though usually Thomas would have a faint idea of whether Crozier had been invited by a foreign institution on the other side of the world, or whether he’d packed a suitcase to follow James Fitzjames to China, two scenarios that had occurred on a surprising number of occasions during Thomas’ three years at university.

Circuitously, Thomas had eventually learned that Crozier’s departure had to do with one of his students, that he had left to present an impromptu paper at a conference to counter a planned takedown of his life’s work. Thomas had come across Cornelius Hickey lifting books from Crozier’s shelves and reviewing Crozier’s notes and making use of Crozier’s computer so often that it had seemed ridiculous, in retrospect, that no one had ever said anything about it. But if university has taught Thomas Jopson anything, it’s that success is rarely based on merit.

Crozier hadn’t been gone two days when Thomas received a call from Le Vesconte, the postgrad in charge of the expedition’s funding. Le Vesconte was sorry, but the funding had been cut in half, they had lost a sponsor, and they would have to let two people go. When Thomas asked why the news had come from Le Vesconte instead of Professor Crozier, he was told that Crozier had withdrawn from the expedition, for the time being at least, to deal with personal issues.

When Thomas asked why the news had come from Le Vesconte instead of Edward Little, who had become the de facto leader in Crozier’s absence, Le Vesconte was evasive at best, saying that there had been a vote and that the decision had been unanimous, rather than a matter of leadership.

And since there was no reaching Crozier or Edward, who were the only people Thomas had really interacted with where the expedition was concerned, he had eventually given up. After all, there was truth to what Le Vesconte said. He was the youngest and the least experienced among the people selected. Contrary to the others, he had not advanced any funds. His research was less directly relevant to the destination and goals of the expedition - which aimed at establishing a new laboratory focusing on life in the North Pole. At best, Thomas was a historian - at worse, an art historian, who had proven his usefulness not by making some brilliant scientific discovery, but by helping his professor when Crozier had decided to have a go at sobriety. 

And by the time Crozier finally reached out, Thomas had failed to qualify for a renewal of his scholarship, and with shame adding to disappointment, it had seemed easier to forge on without looking back.

In the year that followed, a photographer held an exhibit at the art gallery where he worked twice a week. In the last room, she’d hung up a few pictures of her travels in Siberia. One photograph in particular had caught Thomas’ eye, of the sun setting for the last time at the start of the polar night. In the lower left corner, a figure watched on, impossibly small in the surrounding vastness of frozen plains and black, distant mountains.

Time and again he’d find himself returning to the picture, for the glimpses it offered of a life he might have led: the northern climes and the preying darkness, the world shrinking to the circle of snow illuminated by the beam of a torch - to the line of light that thinned out over the horizon, soon to disappear and be gone for months at a time.

“Who would even want to live that kind of life?” his brother had asked him once, and Thomas hadn’t quite dared to answer, _Me, me, I’d rather this than be stuck here, I’ll take the darkness if it means I get a split second of pure light._

  
  
  
  
  


**iii.**

  
  


“You know it didn’t go well,” Edward says. “The expedition, I mean. I suppose that’s not much of a comfort.”

He shifts aside, allowing Thomas to join him under the porch. They’d been halfway to the river when the downpour sent them running for cover. 

“I’ve heard stories,” Thomas says. “Professor Stanley called me in at the end of the year to talk about it - it was the weirdest one-on-one I ever had with a faculty member. He was almost raving. Something about rash behaviour. Keg stands in the tundra.”

Edward shoots him an incredulous look. “Keg stands”, he repeats. His mouth twitches with suppressed laughter.

Thomas nods. 

“I thought you’d appreciate that one. I mean, that’s even what I thought, at the time. I wish I could tell Little about this.”

Edward’s careful stance - arms crossed, shoulders hunched against the cold wetness of the air - makes Thomas long for a rash impulse, any mad surge that would cause him to fit his shoulder against Edward’s in friendly support, or to splay a hand across his back, to rub some warmth back into his tired frame.

“I’m sorry,” Edward says.

“It’s fine.” Thomas shrugs. “I don’t think anyone’s ever failed to recover from the inability to share a good story.”

“You know that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry… about the rest. That I didn’t defend your place in the expedition when all this nonsense went down. Is it worth anything that I tried? They didn’t listen to a bloody word I said. I think I led this expedition for a hot minute before there was a collective decision to sideline me. Obviously the communitarian thinking didn’t take us very far. A bunch of posh twats left to themselves in the wilderness, it was pretty much _Lord of the Flies.”_

“Is that the best you came up with?” Thomas says, his smile strained. “Don’t worry you couldn’t come to the Arctic, we wasted the trip anyways?”

He wishes he could put more animosity into it, but with every passing minute, he is forced to reckon with a long forgotten feeling. Some form of - if not comradeship - at least familiarity.

He used to be at ease around Edward Little, to the point where the easiness would trump every other feeling, leaving him strangely content. It’s a well-worn cliché - the two boys away from home and the mentor and father-figure that they revered and tried to emulate, all the while coming to terms with his irreducible flaws.

“I never react well under pressure,” Edward says. He blinks up at the sky. “I just… Run around in circles, and I never come to a decision. And I’m aware this entire apology is worthless, considering what this trip meant to you. But since I’m given a chance to spit it out, I want you to know that… I’d have wanted you to come, anyways, regardless of how the expedition went. I couldn’t give you that - and it should have been mine to give. That’s what I’m sorry about.”

The college buildings around them have gone a dark yellow under the rain, puddles growing fast between the cobblestones. Thomas looks at Edward’s slender figure and remembers a time when he desperately wanted to own a fine dark coat like Edward’s, before he’d understood that it wasn’t enough to have the money to buy that kind of clothes, that the coat showed off something that was already there. Pride perhaps. A sense of entitlement. He wonders if Edward is aware that even now, when he has stumbled his way through his clumsy apology, he remains as daunting as ever.

“I assumed you’d transferred elsewhere,” Edward lets out. “And after a while, Francis said he thought you must have given up on your polar obsession - that’s a direct quote.”

“Sometimes I think it was a Francis obsession,” Thomas says, before he can let himself question it. It’s not something he’d ever voiced before.

“Ah,” Edward says. “Well, these two things aren’t mutually exclusive, and if you wanted to, you’d only have to say the word. He hasn’t changed. He’d take you on again, in whatever capacity. Assistant, doctoral student, secretary…”

“You can’t be sure of that,” Thomas interrupts him. A large group of tourists shuffle past, under a canopy of brightly-coloured umbrellas.

“Of course I’m sure,” Edward says curtly. “Even if I’d lost touch with him for as long as you have I’d still be sure. He’d have done it earlier if you’d let him.” He interrupts himself as they watch a young couple trying to navigate the puddles - the girl holding four soggy pizza boxes, the boy pushing his bike in front of him, keeping his balance in spite of the pack of beer in the front basket. Thomas feels a sudden, irrepressible pang of longing, directed at the couple and maybe even at the pizza, which brings forth memories of late-night cramming, a pizza delivered right to the door of Crozier’s office long after Crozier had gone home, and Edward’s drowsy mumble, “with pepperoni, _please_ ,” from his cross-legged station on the carpet.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten how much it all mattered to you,” Edward says. “It wasn’t just Francis. It was the north and Francis and the way Francis taught you Inuktitut over breakfast if you showed up early enough.”

“And you,” Thomas says.

Edward shoots him a questioning look. From up close and against the dull black of his damp hair, his eyes are clearer, a warmer kind of brown.

And all in all, it is as if no time has passed at all. Thomas could exchange the memory of the pizza for a hundred similar ones.

They could be in Crozier’s office, with Crozier at his desk and Thomas sitting on the couch, working on something, perhaps a spreadsheet inventory of penguin drawings (“It’s true of science like it’s true of art, if you’re doing research at some point you’ll need to create your own database,” Harry Goodsir had told him), and Edward would walk in, face red from the cold, with an earlier version of that dark coat, frowning about some lecture or perhaps the state of Crozier’s scattered papers, anticipating the task ahead. “Ah, Edward,” Crozier would say, looking up, followed by something like, “Pile of essays for you over there,” or, “I had a question about the Yupighyt of Chutotka”, or, in the earlier days, “Pay a visit to the college bar for me, will you?” (On one memorable occasion, he’d followed that with, “And if they don’t have what I want, run down to Sainsbury’s, but no American whiskey - if you have to, pretend that you’re paying a visit to James at St John’s. Their bar is always better provisioned than ours.”) In the moments that preceded those liquor runs, Edward would look particularly miserable, as if the cold rain or wind or snow had followed him indoors.

“It was the north and the professor and you,” Thomas says, figuring that at this point, he has little left to lose.

In fact, if the last ten years have taught him anything, it’s that he should have spoken sooner, regardless of how Edward might react, or perhaps because, as far back as his first year, when he was still wandering around wonder-eyed and with the conviction that his best years were yet to come, he’d had an inkling that Edward might be - something more tenuous than interested - something tentatively warmer than indifferent. Back then however, he still had a way to go before he could discern desire from envy and make sense of the one piece of advice that Cornelius Hickey had chosen to impart on him, as he came to sit beside him on the battered couch in Crozier’s office, his knee ostensibly brushing against Thomas’ as he delivered one of his patented smiles, of the kind that intimated a knowledge of your thoughts that cut straight to the bone. _I’ll let you in on a secret, Jopson. A guy like Little, he’ll never make the first move. He’s a good little soldier, but he cruelly lacks initiative. If he doesn’t lean far enough towards you, you’ll just have to trip him. But I can guarantee that he’ll let himself fall._

It was by far Hickey’s most annoying trait that he so often turned out to be right.

Edward does not pull back when Thomas leans in for a gentle kiss - he doesn’t startle or protest but answers in kind, as if his thoughts had somehow been running along the exact same tracks.

“How was that?” Edward asks, when after a long, quiet minute, they finally break apart.

“Long overdue,” Thomas answers, forever truthful, and moves right back in, his mouth catching the sudden bloom of Edward’s smile.

  
  
  


_It would do you good to have someone to fawn over who isn’t Crozier,_ Hickey had called out as he left, laughter in his voice. A parting slap. _Not that there’s much to fawn over, in my opinion. Little is as drab and depressing as his Soviet wastelands._

  
  
  
  
  
  


**iv.**

  
  


The thing is that Thomas does not “fawn” over people. He cares - he trusts and respects and loves, with steadfast good graces until his trust is betrayed and the blow cripples him, always it seems, beyond repair.

It is a relief to find out that he was wrong on that front at least. Under the wet spires and rooftops, holding on to Edward with both hands and pressing himself as close as he dares - which isn’t close enough, not quite - it feels as if the past ten years have been little more than a dull dream. This slow, maddening make-out could very well be the end of a previous conversation, the answer to an earlier question, _Have you seen my copy of Cherry-Garrard?_ or _Jopson, did you get news of Crozier’s visa?_ or, _They’re showing a documentary about life in the gulags at the arts centre on Thursday, you should come._

It occurs to him, retrospectively, that the documentary must have been Edward’s idea of, if not a date, at least a fun night out.

“I’m glad I can finally get away with saying this,” Edward mumbles, as he pushes Thomas back against the door, fingers dragging through his hair, “you have extraordinary eyes. Ice blue. How are you even still single?”

“How are you?” Thomas laughs, quiet and fond, and keeps on smiling at Edward’s exasperated eye roll.

“Work,” he says. “Bad decisions. Now would be the worst time to review my dating history.”

Thomas widens his eyes in mock horror.

“Anyone I know?”

“Irrelevant, right now and in the foreseeable future,” Edward assures him, and deals him another, far sloppier kiss that banishes this line of questioning from Thomas’ mind. 

They might have stayed here longer - neither in much of a hurry to abandon their shelter, the enforced closeness of the porch as the rain keeps falling all in a rush, muting every sound beyond their erratic breaths. But the dampness begins to steal airy fingers beneath Thomas’ collar and sleeves, and he sneezes, once, with a pitiful, “Sorry”.

Edward gives his arm a brief squeeze. “You’re coming back to my room, now.”

There follows a wild walk through the rain-soaked streets, dashing under awnings and porches, veering into side streets that Thomas must have known but doesn’t care to remember, not when he can focus instead on Edward’s confident stride and his absurdly cheerful mood. Edward guides him through the doors of the college with a hand at his elbow, smiling at the porter, and he impulsively tugs Thomas by the hand when he makes to head off in the wrong direction - towards his old room, in the more contemporary building on the other side of the college.

Thomas steps into Edward’s room without sparing it a glance beyond the immediate localisation of the bed, and he walks Edward back towards it - Edward shrugging off his coat as he goes, Thomas trying to remove his shoes without letting go of Edward’s hip - neck - hair - giving up at last and kneeling to undo his laces and then Edward’s to save some time, finally removing his shoes with a strange errant thought or rather memory, of kneeling at Francis Crozier’s feet as he helped him take off his shoes after a long day, Crozier not so much drunk, that time, but rather exhaustedly sober. Once Thomas had had the shoes in hand, Crozier had collapsed onto the couch and fallen asleep with his feet hanging off the edge, and Thomas had stood there, swallowing down an unexpected pang of sadness, his eyes fixed upon Crozier’s woollen blue socks.

“What are you thinking about?” Edward asks softly.

Thomas looks up and tries for a smile. 

“That we lead lonely lives when we don’t really have to,” he says. “Which means that we must want it, on some level…”

“That’s a gloomy thought to be having right now,” Edward tells him, as he kicks off his shoes and Thomas settles down on the bed at his side. “You do know that loneliness is not sustainable in the long run, don’t you?” 

Thomas tries to accommodate the change of perspective, with Edward lying down beside him, a look of concern on his face but not quite worry (not yet), brown eyes deeply shadowed. Thomas had always, foolishly maybe, envied Edward’s straight nose, how easily it made it for him to strike a confident pose, even when he lost his footing, even when he didn’t have the faintest clue what was going on.

“During the polar night, in the cities I work on - Norilsk and the like - they try to balance out the darkness and isolation with a teeming cultural life,” Edward tells him. “Plays, ballet lessons. They take painting classes. Of all people, you should know that this is what gets people through dark times.” He rolls onto his back, eyes to the ceiling. “The secret to surviving it all,” he says. “Comradeship, sex. And your pictures of penguins, lovingly drawn.” 

“I missed you,” Thomas says, resenting how short it comes of encompassing everything that he’s missed - not just Edward but his sullen frowns and his talk of the industrial cities of the far north and the steadying knowledge that for a few moments longer they would only exist in each other’s company, in the quiet of Crozier’s little office.

Edward turns back onto his side, hand reaching for Thomas’ belt and pulling him briskly forward.

“If you feel lonely after this,” he says, “you’re allowed to ignore me for the next ten years.”

And this, too, brings to mind the gentle folly of his college years - Edward’s hands at his belt, untucking his shirt, unzipping his fly. Suddenly he’s twenty again and desire claws at his gut like a living thing, bringing him straight back to that third year, when at long last he’d made up his mind about what turned him on and in true erratic college fashion, handjobs would either happen at two in the morning in the alleyway behind a club or at 2pm between two lectures in the messy room of a bored postgrad, with no middle ground, and the headiness of someone else’s hand hastily working him up was (is) almost too much to bear. 

Darkness curls in at the edges of his vision and he fists a hand in Edward’s jumper, mumbles “Here, come here,” lets himself be kissed again, invites Edward’s body to settle over his own as the blankets grow damp with rain water. Most of it is different (is new): Edward’s sure hands and the smell of the rain on his skin, the sound he makes when Thomas’ thigh pushes against his crotch and the half-desperate jerk of his hips as he rubs himself against Thomas’ leg, eyes screwed shut, the suspicion that they are both trying to hold on to some measure of discomfort, out of some perceived guilt for time lost and opportunities wasted. And yet there is pleasure to be found in the discomfort, too, in the awkward entanglement of still-clothed bodies and the constriction of rain-soaked jeans, in Edward’s startled wince as his hand catches on Thomas’ fly, his grimace swallowed into a kiss that robs them both of breath - in Thomas’ wounded look as he comes in Edward’s fist, his arms locked around Edward’s shoulders, his heart beating a mad drum. 

When he lays his head down upon the pillow he catches an upside-down glimpse of the mullioned window and of the grey-white sky beyond, yellow-brown pinnacles reaching down towards him like so many stalactites. He remembers the rain.

Edward half-rises to snatch a paper napkin from the coffee table. Thomas is quick to pull him back down once the napkin has been tossed away, more than willing to ignore the odd angle, the fact that their feet are hanging off the bed.

“Look at me,” he says, a suggestion rather than an order. And Edward does, dark eyes never straying from Thomas’ face as Thomas slides a hand inside his jeans, nervous that this won’t work, somehow, that Edward will change his mind about wanting this - about wanting him. But Edward is unquestionably hard, unusually impatient, and for a moment, as the last of his reserve slips away, Thomas finds a mirror of his own fear and longing in his naked gaze. Enough frailty in the tense line of his jaw, in his shuddering breath, that he slows the pace of his strokes, tries to hold this Edward captive a moment longer, before he once again becomes a polished enigma in a handsome coat. 

Edward’s hand lifts from Thomas’ elbow to grip Thomas’ wrist, holding him in place - his orgasm seems to wrench something from him, part of the fear perhaps, most of the tension, whatever held him up so that he sinks back into the mattress, his eyes unfocused. 

Breath stirring Thomas’ hair, he mumbles something that Thomas doesn’t quite hear. “Don’t go,” or maybe, “Don’t let go.”

 _Where?_ Thomas wonders. _Of what?_ It’s likely that the answer is immediate and simple, and on that front Edward has nothing to fear. Thomas isn’t about to move when he feels as content as a cat on a sun-baked porch - with the soothing sound of the rain standing in for the sun, and the porch being advantageously replaced by Edward’s body where it warms his side. He’ll have to get up, eventually, to clean up better than the tissue in his pocket would allow, but it can wait.

Maybe Edward meant something else, however. 

_Don’t leave town._

_Don’t let me leave you._

Half a day ago, Thomas would have given nothing of their chances of getting anywhere together, but now some stubborn, frustratingly hopeful part of him can’t help but wonder. _What if I hold on tighter this time. What if he holds me back?_

  
  
  
  
  
  


**v.**

  


Edward has to wrestle with the window to get it unstuck.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s these old wooden frames… But if we don’t get any air in here, we’re going to suffocate. Everyone wants a room in this building, but the undergrads have it much better in the modern extension…”

“This brings back memories.”

A shower would be in order, but he still feels boneless and none too ready to cross over to the bathroom. The best he managed to do was pull himself into a sitting position to give the room a proper look.

The furniture must have been issued by the college and has no doubt been here from time immemorial. Thomas takes in the wooden bench tucked against the window, which Edward appears to have been using as a writing desk, and the actual desk, which serves both as a bar and as a bookshelf, and the rickety coffee table with the overflowing ashtray and the armchair that doubles as a coat rack. Here and there are more personal touches: the patchwork quilt on the bed that they’ve thoroughly rumpled and a rowing oar on the wall and a postcard of Caspar David Friedrich’s _Wreck of Hope,_ propped against an empty mug stamped with the college crest. Edward’s suitcase is at the foot of the bed, spilling out books, not clothes. 

“I only moved in last week,” Edward says by way of apology, as the casement finally swings open, letting in a rush of cool air. All at once the entire room smells like the outdoors, that heavy countryside smell that Thomas knows so well - water dragging itself through the leaves, dragging itself down through the earth. He takes a grateful gulp.

“How long are you staying?” 

There are even more books on the dresser, a mixture of pompous political science titles and geography treatises with dull, monochrome covers and the odd contemporary novel. About a third of the books bear titles in the Cyrillic alphabet.

“It depends,” Edward says. He lifts his pack of tobacco. “Do you want another?”

Thomas shakes his head no. Not quite assured enough, yet, to dare tell Edward that he doesn’t need that excuse anymore.

He glances above Edward’s shoulder at the foliage showing through the window. They’ve roomed Edward with the fellows, with windows that open onto the fellows’ private garden. Thomas could leave the room with his eyes closed and find his way to Crozier’s office, two floors and a narrow staircase away.

“Is his office still…”

He gestures vaguely. Edward lets the lighter flicker out. Setting the cigarette aside, he gives Thomas a considering look.

“You should visit him,” he says. “He’s probably in today. I don’t keep up with his schedule as much as I used to, but he should be around.”

Again, Thomas shakes his head. Rather than to pursue the subject, he goes to join Edward by the window. All around Edward on the bench are piles of printed articles and notes - Thomas glimpses a letter from the Royal Geographic Society on top of the nearest pile before Edward pulls him in, knees falling open so Thomas can step between his legs, and the unhurried kissing resumes to the soothing background of the storm, Thomas holding on to the rough window frame, paint flaking under his fingers, his other hand gripping Edward’s shoulder as he tries to keep his balance.

“Let’s go back to bed?” he suggests, which at the moment sounds safer than any talk about the past or the words that jumped out at him from the letter, _expedition_ and _sponsorship_ and Crozier’s name, which Thomas had never before seen written out in full.

They retreat to the bed though it can’t be any later than two in the afternoon. Thomas lays his head in Edward’s lap and doses off as Edward smokes, waking only long enough to hear Edward turn a page of whatever book was at hand. Outside the rain continues to fall.

The familiarity of the scene is almost disorienting, in part because it is hardly any different from any afternoon that they have spent together in the past, save that Thomas is far too aware of Edward’s every breath, and that Edward has found a way to smoke and read one-handed so that he can stroke Thomas’ hair.

The familiarity of the scene is almost disorienting, for how easily he could become used to this, to waking up and mumbling, “Read me something,” to which Edward complies with a paragraph about the pollution of a Siberian river by a metallurgical plant; to waking up and reaching for Edward, Edward setting the book and ashtray aside to kiss him with the dry taste of the cigarette still clinging to his lips and tongue.

As the afternoon wears on the rains quiet down, but neither of them suggests that they should head back outside. They take turns in the tiny shower, and then Edward heads off to the kitchen and returns with a half attempt at pasta that Thomas falls upon like a starved urchin. 

Thomas talks about his mother, about the clinic sending bills that he can’t possibly pay, even with his brother’s meagre salary added to his own. He talks about the museum where he has been working, the past year’s exhibit about local birds, the old rooms filled with dust and the mannequins hunched over ploughs and churning bright yellow butter made of resin, the paint gone white in places. Throughout it all, Edward looks down thoughtfully on him, back propped against the wooden headboard, a pile of unmarked essays at his elbow.

“Could you leave for a while, if the pay was worth it?” he asks. “Would it be an issue, with your family?”

“If it was a job that I wanted - that I genuinely wanted to do, she’d encourage me, even. But that’s a complicated correlation, isn’t it? A job that I want to do, that also happens to pay well.”

“Do you know that Franklin’s retired?” Edward says, seemingly out of the blue. “Ross is head of the department now. The young Ross. He’s considerably better than Franklin at running things. How long are you staying?”

Thomas straightens up slightly, giving Edward a questioning look.

“Tomorrow night. I have a train at 6 after the reunion.”

“Six?” Edward laughs. “Jopson, the point of a reunion is to party. Parties don’t start before six.”

“I don’t remember you as being much of a party-goer,” Thomas notes. “Unless we’re talking in the strict sense of going to parties, which I suppose you did. You just never seemed to enjoy them much.”

“Standing bored at the back of a room with a glass in hand does qualify as partying. It takes all sorts,” Edward says, looking down his nose at Thomas in an eerily familiar fashion that has him smile in spite of himself. “Six it is, then.” 

Edward picks up his phone and swears between his teeth. 

“I have to go. There’s some tea party at the Department of Geography. Needless to say, I’d much rather stay here and keep reading about polluted rivers while you drool on my jumper. But they want me to talk to some London bigwig, and there’s a chance that he’ll give me money so I can spend another winter in Norilsk - enjoying the polar blackout by minus 50 degrees, we all have strange hobbies…” He leans down to kiss Thomas’ bemused smile. “Tomorrow - don’t leave until you’ve seen me, alright? I can’t promise anything, but I’ll give it my best.”

Thomas holds on to his hand as Edward makes to step away.

“I’m having war flashbacks of what it was like to sleep with people at uni,” he says. “The lack of sleep, mostly. Cramming and clubbing by night, fitting hook-ups in between seminars.”

“This answers a ten year-old bet,” Edward says, eyebrows raised. “Is Jopson getting any? Some of the guys on my boat said no, others said plenty.”

 _Public school pricks,_ Thomas thinks, without much heat.

“What did you put your money on?” he asks.

Edward sits at the edge of the armchair, shoes in hand. “I had no interest in betting on your sexual life, Jopson. The frustration was already driving me up the walls. Don’t get too distracted by your choir boys tomorrow, alright?”

Thomas huffs, gaze averted to try and hide the rush of blood to his face.

“What happens now?” he asks.

“I’ll go to that tea party. I’m not dragging you there - I wouldn’t be doing you a favour, believe me. You can stay as long as you want, though I doubt there’s much to do here, unless you want to dust off your Russian… I’m having dinner with…” He looks up. “Wait, what are you doing tonight? I was going out with Hartnell, but if you’re around, I’m more than willing to reschedule.”

“Don’t,” Thomas shakes his head. “Not because of me, I don’t…”

“Come out with us, then,” Edward smiles. “I was waiting for him this morning, when you found me… He came back from Adelaide Island a week ago. You can listen to him talk about glaciers and it’ll make up for our aborted visit of the museum this morning. And then we could just… come back here? Pick up where we left off.”

“The pollution of Siberian rivers?” 

Edward’s mouth twitches.

“I’ll meet you later then? Your phone number is still the same?” 

They embrace a final time by the door. Edward’s coat is still damp from the rain but Thomas holds him close anyways, reluctant to trust that this strange day will last.

As the door closes, Thomas catches a glimpse of his face in the mirror behind it: black hair in disarray, cheeks heated and blue eyes wild with confusion. Gently, he probes the red patch on his neck where Edward’s stubble has chafed his skin.

He refuses to linger too long on how brightly, dazedly happy he feels - on how long it has been since he’s felt that way - on how right it feels to be here, in Edward’s room, surrounded by Edward’s thoughts and things, much as it had once, ten years ago, when the things belonged to Crozier and him and Edward would kick and toss and smile at each other like children in a sandbox.

  
  
  
  
  
  


When he heads out he doesn’t have a particular destination in mind. Coffee perhaps, or he’ll swing by his hotel and pick up a change of clothes.

He doesn’t think before he turns right instead of left - heading up instead of down when he reaches the tower that flanks the south wing of the old building. 

He recognises the steps, the way the stone slabs sink in the middle from the tread of thousands of students. The ceiling drops too low in places and on the two or three occasions when he’d helped Professor Crozier back to his room it had been a wild affair, trying not to knock his head, trying to keep Crozier from missing a step. 

And once - much later, when Crozier had been sober some six months and he’d resumed giving his anthropology seminars, ceasing to rely upon James Fitzjames and Professor Blanky and Edward to stand in for him despite the fact that none of them had more than a passing knowledge of the field - it had been Crozier who had helped Thomas down the stairs, after he’d spent the better part of an afternoon lying on Crozier’s couch with a 39 degree fever.

Ten years on, Francis Crozier’s name on the door is still accompanied by a small sticker of a polar bear.

Thomas doesn’t give himself time to hesitate, but raises his hand and knocks.

Silence stretches, in and outside of the room.

After a beat, he knocks again.

Still there is no answer, and with a sigh that he would be hard-pressed to identify (disappointment, or relief?) Thomas turns away, and heads off down the stairs.

If running into Edward was a sign, then perhaps this is a sign, too. He doesn’t feel ready - truth be told, he’s unsure that he will ever be.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**vi.**

  
  


“Every student is assigned a tutor,” Thomas was told, during his first week. Usually, the tutor was a fellow at one’s college. In theory, they would meet with a student every week or so to check on their progress, academic and otherwise - monitoring how the student was settling in, providing help and advice if they needed it.

His tutor, Thomas was told, was to be Professor Stanley, whose “methodical nature works wonders with freshers.” The phrasing had stuck with Thomas, particularly after he’d met the dour and unsympathetic Stanley.

Thomas diligently met with the professor once every two weeks. Stanley’s office was on the second landing of the old tower, a floor above a much livelier venue, the office of one “Prof Francis Crozier” towards which many students and older faculty members congregated every week. Thomas met them on the stairs, engaged in spirited rows about the melting of the ice caps and the meaning of words in a language he’d never heard before. It wasn’t until three or four months later that he met Crozier himself - coming up the stairs alone, with a ridiculous amount of books and papers in his arms.

He rushed forward and before Crozier had quite understood what was happening, Thomas had secured all the books that were about to fall and quite a few more, leaving Crozier’s hands free to dig in his pocket for his keys.

“Do you have a name, son?” Crozier had asked, the Irish plain in his voice. He would have had an inch or two on Jopson if he’d stood to his full height, yet even slouching he took up space - even in his faded suit and with the pale, almost colourless sweep of his blond hair - his eyes pinned you in place and the curved edge of his smile did the rest. From the first look Thomas could tell that the man had him weighed and measured.

He could only hope he would pass muster.

“Jopson, sir. Thomas Jopson.”

Thomas held Crozier’s gaze for all of two seconds before he quickly looked down at the book on top of the pile in his arms. 

“‘Inuktitut’, sir?”

“Come on in, Jopson. You might as well put this down somewhere.”

By the time Edward arrived, three hours later, Thomas had transcribed five pages of Professor Crozier’s notes on various theories of acculturation and had learned quite a few things about the territory of Nunavut in Northern Canada.

Crozier vaguely introduced Edward as his student and assistant, and then he told him to accompany Thomas downstairs, as if there was a risk of him getting lost on his way out. He’d sent Thomas on his way with a battered copy of _The Worst Journey in the World_ and an even-voiced, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jopson.”

“Does he often do that?” Jopson had asked Edward, as they stood outside the building. 

Edward was so very young then but he hadn’t looked so to Thomas, who stared at his poise and desperately wished he could emulate it.

“Do what?” Edward asked. “Adopt every student that comes into his office? Yes, it’s a habit of his."

It is the only time in Thomas’ memory that Edward ever used such a deadpan tone with him, and the moment he saw his joke land - the moment Thomas’ face fell - he shook his head and gave him a faint, reassuring smile.

“He doesn’t usually tell them to come back the next day,” he said.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Thomas crosses the courtyard towards the college entrance, with an eye to the dark grey underbelly of the clouds. It will rain again, though he might be able to avoid the worst of it if he runs.

Lost in thought, he does not immediately notice the tall figure coming through the doors, not until the man is almost level with him and stops - stares back - and calls out, incredulous,

“Jopson?”

Thomas staggers to a halt, his heart in his throat. But there is no holding back the shy smile that rises to his face as Francis Crozier advances upon him, one hand extended for a pat on the shoulder that fast turns into a warm embrace.

“I had hope you’d reappear,” Crozier says, Irish accent as thick as ever, the usual hard glare softened by affection.

“Is there anything I can help you carry?” Thomas offers, on instinct, and is rewarded by a loud laugh that has every passer-by in the courtyard look in their direction.

Crozier doesn’t let go of Thomas’ shoulder as he pilots him deftly towards the tower stairs.

“If anything, I’ll be the one carrying whatever you need carried, Jopson."

“I wouldn’t want to interfere with your schedule, sir.”

“Nonsense. Although if you stick around, you’ll run into Edward. Do you remember Edward? No longer a student of course. Ross and I are planning a new trip north and he has been helping me with the logistics. Apparently he’s found me...” Crozier’s step slows and he gives Thomas a shrewd look as understanding dawns on him. “... invaluable help, that’s what his hasty message said, ‘invaluable’ in all caps - you wouldn’t happen to have run into Edward lately, Jopson, would you?”

Thomas swallows, his face burning.

“At the Polar Research Institute,” he says, trying to shove the too-vivid memories to the back of his mind - Edward’s mouth and hands - the warmth of Edward’s jumper against his cheek, the rhythm of his breathing and the quiet reading lulling him to sleep - “we… caught up.”

“I see,” Crozier muses, his wry tone as familiar as a well-worn book or coat or a beloved landscape, where in spite of the years, the hills and the trees and the feel of the air have remained unchanged. Pushing open the door to his office, he extends an arm in invitation. “Make yourself at home, Jopson.”

It’s an order Thomas is only too happy to obey.


End file.
